


Wake Me Up When It's All Over

by define_serenity



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coma, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t, Blaine,” he whispers, “You’re my entire world. I couldn’t give up on you if I tried. You’re all I’ve ever known.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Me Up When It's All Over

**Author's Note:**

> anisstaranise prompted:
> 
>  _“I can’t–damn it, I can’t do this._ he cried out. He shook his head with two fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. _I’m losing it. Sense, sleep - everything. I look at you and the whole world unravels. Give up on you? God, how? You’re all I know.”_ (Beau Taplin / The September)

**i. denial**

It can’t be. Blaine can’t be  _gone_. He can’t be…

No.

“Sebastian.” Quinn’s voice, her hand at his shoulder, while the walls ripple with his tears. “They say we can see him now.”

A steady  _beep-beep_ , monotonous but for the orchestra of others in the room and a reflection in the window his eyes pinned down half an hour ago—Blaine bathed, clothed, hooked up to a matrix of machines buzzing up and down the length of the hospital. 

“Sebastian?” Quinn’s hand draws down his back. “Hey, it’ll be okay, he’s–”

“He’s gone,” he chokes out, voice alien and raw and it’s all he can do to keep himself upright, to avoid falling to his knees and grow roots through the floor so he might become just as trapped as– as–

“He’s not.” Quinn’s voice softens, like a mother’s speaking to a child, trying to explain something instrumentally big in small measured words. “Sebastian–”

He breathes in deep, tests if his feet can lift safely off the ground without making him stumble and starts walking. If he leaves and drives home Blaine will be there, waiting for him, like always, like forever, like they promised each other.

 

**ii. anger**

_Sebastian, it’s Pamela, I–_

His mother-in-law’s voice seeps into every nook and crevice of the apartment, along the smashed mug (Blaine’s favorite) he couldn’t stand to look at, over the broken picture frames in the hall he’d swept off in a blind rage, into the closet in the bedroom, where Blaine’s clothes lay together in a messy heap after he strong-armed the metal bar.

_How are you, baby? We must keep missing each other at the hospital._

Pamela used to visit five times a week, whenever she could really, now three times—it’s been weeks and there’s been no change, if hers and Quinn’s messages are anything to go by. He’s seen Blaine three times. Three times spanning weeks that feel closer to eons, an eternity separating him from the one person who’s always been there. It’s slowly driving him crazy, the anger towards the other driver, the anger towards–

_They took him off the ventilator today. He’s breathing on his own now. Doctors say that’s a good sign._

–towards Blaine, who should have woken up already, who should come back to him, because he promised, they both did. They swore until– until–

_I do wish you’d talk to me._

He stands and rips the answering machine clean off its resting place, plaster covering the floor where the socket tears from the wall, another crater blown into the war zone he’s made of their home. A home that’s lost something, a presence, a voice, the promise of one altogether. 

Then. Inevitably. Nothing but silence. 

 

**iii. bargaining**

He’s been up all night, jittery with caffeine and his eyes dry from being behind the computer for too long, but he runs after the neurologist first thing in the morning—he’s visited Blaine six times this week, took Pamela out to dinner, talked to Quinn, actually showed his face at work again. It’s good. It keeps him busy. It keeps him focused. 

Because there’s a way. There has to be. He knows there is. Whether it’s an amaltadine or zolpidem treatment, or if he has to come down here to talk to Blaine 24/7; somewhere, out there, some doctor will have a better clue of how to help Blaine. 

“What about deep brain stimulation?” His feet fight to keep up with Dr Stone, who’s trying hard to ditch him during his rounds, but he won’t let off, he won’t let this rest. Blaine needs to wake up, no discussion. 

“DBS is in its infant stages, Mr Smythe. I wouldn’t recommend–” Dr Stone sighs, his patience wearing thin. “Your husband is in what we refer to as a persistent vegetative state. He has shown no signs of cognition, and his MRIs show minimal brain activity.”

He knows all that.  _He knows_. Blaine vitals may be strong but his brain scans haven’t improved—still, is doing nothing and hoping for the best so much better? Should he drop to his knees and pray instead?

“Hey, baby,” he says softly once he retreats back to Blaine’s room, leaning down to brush a kiss to his forehead. He has been defeated, lost without his best friend, his lover, his husband. How does he live life without Blaine by his side?

 

**iv. depression**

“I’m sorry,” he cries into Blaine’s shoulder, fingers curled in the familiar blue of one of Blaine’s favorite sweaters—(The nurses don’t approve–they have enough work getting Blaine out his hospital gown, but the therapist he hired comes highly recommended, and she suggested as much familiarity as possible, including physical contact.) “Blaine, I’m so sorry.”

The curtains are drawn along the bed, though he doesn’t care who hears him now, not the patients, not their family, not any of the staff. Quinn helped him clean up the apartment, he went out and bought a new mug for Blaine that now rests by his bed, he’s washed and ironed all of Blaine’s clothes so he won’t be upset with him if he returns.

No. Not if.  _When_. 

He sniffles, curled close to Blaine’s body like he hasn’t in months, and the physical ache of Blaine’s scent, the brush of his skin, the relentless stubble he wished the nurses would tend to more carefully—it spirals into his bones until they’re wrung out. He’s exhausted. He’s terrified. He’s so incredibly lost. 

“Quinn told me today not to give up.” 

_Don’t give up, Sebastian, he’ll come back to you._

“Sometimes I wish I could.” He pulls Blaine’s left hand onto his chest, lacing their fingers together so that their rings touch—a meaningless thing, really, until he feels Blaine’s heartbeat in the palm of his hand.  _Hope_. “ I eat but I don’t sleep. I work but I don’t feel it. Sometimes I even smile and wonder why. Or how.”

He cuddles into the space between the pillow and Blaine’s shoulder, hoping to get trapped there, sink into whatever realm Blaine now lives. They’d find each other again. He knows they would. 

“I can’t, Blaine,” he whispers, “You’re my entire world. I couldn’t give up on you if I tried. You’re all I’ve ever known.”

He closes his eyes, pictures Blaine’s bright smile and ridiculous laughter, soon falling asleep to the tune of Blaine’s heartbeat.

 

**v. acceptance**

After five months, it becomes a routine. He packs up his work to take with him, a book to read to Blaine or any of the other coma patients who might be listening, picks up some lunch because he can’t stomach the hospital food anymore, flirts with the nurses, and spends time with his husband. Pamela visits. Quinn comes by. Some of their other friends. But he’s a permanent fixture. 

It’s not ideal. In fact it sucks to such a degree that it leaves him ill, like the act of missing is an infection his body fights off one day, a little less successfully the next. It’s a terrible kind of missing, not the same as how he used to miss Blaine when he vacationed alone with his family, or that time during Christmas break he couldn’t leave the house with his broken ankle. This is the kind of missing that matters. He’ll never give up, he’ll never walk away, because there’s no one he loves more than Blaine Anderson(-Smythe).

He’s known that since he was eleven years old. 

His heart free-falls when he catches Pamela outside the coma ward, clutching both hands to her mouth and about to burst out crying. 

His bag drops to the floor. 

No. 

It can’t be. 

He’s not ready. 

“What’s wrong?” He rushes over, the missing metastasizing to internal organs. “What happened?”

Pamela shakes her head and chokes around words she can’t say, he won’t let her say, but grabs his arm instead and manhandles him inside—he resists the push, tries to twist out of her arms, but his eyes fall to Blaine’s bed like he knew they would, like they inevitably always do.

“Blaine,” he breathes. Blinks. Swallows.

Blaine,  _his Blaine_ , smiles at him weakly. “He–Hey,” his voice sounds frail and broken, too many months of disuse, but he reaches out a hand, the arm flopping back down onto the mattress. 

A single nurse and doctor tend to Blaine but they back away several steps as he approaches, disbelieving, tears in his eyes, pulling impossibly closer to a body his would recognize blindly. “You’re awake,” he says, cupping Blaine’s face, too stubbly, too pale, but who cares about that when he’s back, his Blaine’s right here, smiling, warm and safe. 

Blaine pushes into his chest like he could dig inside and fill up the hole these past few months carved out—the ache worsens around the thought of missing Blaine, around what hell these past few months have been waiting for this moment. He chokes back his tears and pain and pulls back to look into Blaine’s eyes, some of the light in them gone, but he makes the solemn vow to reignite it, to be the best husband he can possibly be, every waking moment of every day to come. 

“I’ve missed you so much.” He settles his forehead against Blaine’s. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

 

 

 

 **\- fin -**  

 


End file.
